The Generations Advance

Recently I did standardized testing for our 8-year-old homeschooled granddaughter, Abigail. It was a nostalgic time for many in our family.

Abby and I our first morning

As public schooled children, Steve and I received our standardized testing in our public school classrooms. Nathan and Christopher started standardized testing as homeschool students in the back room of a Christian bookstore. When we moved to Leavenworth and began leading the local homeschool group, my parents did the standardized testing for the homeschooled children at the Main Post Chapel on Ft. Leavenworth. Over time that facility was no longer available to us. Then my parents did the standardized testing for our children in their home – grandparents giving the standardized tests to their grandchildren.

Now my first grandchild has reached an age for standardized testing, and I am in a season of life where I have the time available to do that for her.

We planned four mornings for the testing, but with only one child being tested, we could go at her pace. Almost every test she finished in half the allotted time and that included double checking. In just two mornings from 9:00 to 11:15, she completed the whole Iowa Basic Skills battery. Of course, we had a break in the middle for a snack and some chatting.

For me it is a special season to move from the mothering tasks of homeschooling to the grand-mothering tasks of supporting the next generation in their homeschooling.

Trusting in Jesus,
Teri

Abby brought me chocolates our second day!

“A man hath joy by the answer of his mouth: and
a word spoken in due season, how good is it”
(Proverbs 15:23).

11 thoughts on “The Generations Advance”

Teri, you are such a blessing to your family! Thank you for sharing your parenting and homeschooling insight over the years. We are first generation homeschoolers who live 2 hours away from our closest family, and we don’t have the option to involve them in our children’s education the way you do. You are a tremendous example to me of the way I want to parent my now-teenaged children into adulthood, and how I want to help them when I’m a grandma.

I personally do not believe in heavy ‘testing’ on children age seven and under. But a child who is eight and fully able to read a bible independently should most certainly do some testing. I have heard of families who do not pressure reading skills until age ten so that other skills may develop, like housekeeping, foreign language, writing skills and basic research skills.

Even though I’m not near graduating my last homeschooled child (10 years down, 12 years to go), I already get a little sentimental about it all being over one day. But this post excites me to think of all the ways I can some day help my future grandchildren in their homeschooling! Thanks!!